As Katie Price's husband cheats on her with her ‘closest friend’... proof there is no personal calamity the pregnant model won't cash in on

On the multi-million-pound, candy-hued, Swarovski-crystal-studded planet inhabited by businesswoman and former glamour model Katie Price, no personal event or crisis is permitted to pass unexploited.

Be it an engagement (five to date), marriage (three), divorce (two and one possibly pending), birth (four), pregnancy (six, including a miscarriage), autobiography (five), boob job (six), health scare (three), public spat with an ex or rival (countless), every last scrap of her soap-opera life is shared with her global audience.

Brand KP’s estimated £40 million fortune has been built on such red-top exclusives, reality-TV fly-on-the-wall exposés and gossip-magazine titbits.

As the self-confessed ‘chav’ once said: ‘Whatever I do turns to gold.’

And so it came to pass this week when we learned via Twitter of the latest calamity to befall the 35-year-old mother-of-four, ‘feminist’ icon and one-woman marketing phenomenon.

It remains to be seen whether this will prove to be as lucratively marketable as all her other ‘crises’ so far.

Six months pregnant with her fifth child — her second with her third husband, part-time stripper Kieran Hayler, 27 — a heartbroken Katie announced she was divorcing him, just a week after declaring to the world that she’d never been happier.

She told her Twitter followers about her shock discovery that Kieran had been cheating on her with her best friend of 20 years, Jane Pountney.

Jane — who at 49 is 22 years Kieran’s senior — and her husband Derrick, 52, had been guests at Katie’s Bahamas beach wedding only 14 months earlier.

Some cynics suspected the whole story had been fabricated for cheap publicity. But yesterday, in another ‘dramatic’ turn of events, Jane admitted that she had had an affair with Kieran.

Katie Price, pictured right, has four children by three different men. She is now six months pregnant with her fifth child

In a short joint statement with her husband — who had previously denied the affair — they said the fling was ‘something Jane deeply regrets’.

Kieran has now reportedly been banished to an outbuilding on Katie’s sprawling £2.5 million country estate near Horsham, West Sussex.

The couple have a son, Jett (the story of his dramatic premature birth was, of course, brought to us by OK! magazine), who is only eight months old.

Nevertheless, some are wondering if, true to form, Katie is revelling rather too much in this latest drama.

Earlier yesterday, for example, a royal connection was thrown in to add further spice to the tale. It was claimed that Katie had previously challenged Kieran over an alleged fling with the cousin of Prince Harry’s ex- girlfriend, Cressida Bonas.

A red-top newspaper reported that shortly before Katie’s wedding to Kieran in January 2013, she had phoned April Bonas, 24, to confront her over the rumours.

The nuptials went ahead, apparently after reassurances that any romance predated Kieran’s relationship with Katie.

However, this week Price announced on Twitter: ‘Sorry to say me and Kieran are divorcing. Him and my best friend Jane Pountney been having a full blown sexual affair for seven months.’

Branding her friend Jane a ‘whore’ and ‘homewrecker’, Katie went on: ‘Kieran is a disgusting human being doing this after I’ve just had a baby and still doing it till I caught them.

‘No human being deserves this especially being six months pregnant. Worse [sic] pain in the world.’

Suitably attired for a ‘crisis meeting’ in turquoise hot-pants showing a garter tattoo on her thigh, sunglasses and furry Ugg boots, Katie had tearful (and well-publicised) talks on Wednesday with her husband and the Pountneys.

After which, bizarrely, Derrick Pountney declared the whole matter a ‘storm in a teacup’ and that the ‘affair’ between Kieran and his wife of 16 years had been no more than a drunken kiss.

‘It’s all been exaggerated. Katie did what she does, and put out what she thought straight on Twitter,’ he said outside his five-bedroomed detached family home in an affluent West Sussex village.

This latest ‘crisis’ has certainly come at a time when Katie could do with a few headlines to revive her career.

Katie Price, pictured leaving a house with Derrick Pountney. He described recent events as a 'storm in a teacup'

Brand KP's estimated £40¿million fortune has been built on such red-top exclusives, reality-TV fly-on-the-wall exposés and gossip-magazine titbits

Her last £5 million TV deal with Sky Living was axed two years ago, reportedly due to poor viewing figures.

But she is said by sources close to the family to be ‘fuming’ over allegations of playing this week’s events for publicity, telling friends: ‘Why would I humiliate myself for a few cheap headlines?’

Certainly, her friends have privately told the Mail that they are worried for her.

And PR consultant and author Mark Borkowski said: ‘Katie Price presents a continuing soap opera to the world without, as far as I can see, taking any PR advice from anyone.

There are absolutely no boundaries between her personal and private life.

‘The success of her strategy depends entirely on the public’s willingness to engage with her story.

Once that goes, you’re in trouble, and the psychological impact of going from someone whose worth is measured in headlines to nothing can be devastating.

‘The danger is that when people become bored or new stars come along, you have to create a spike of interest to refocus attention. It becomes a constant theme.

The spectacular high point in her career has been and gone. Creating a spike of interest generates other commercial opportunities.

‘It’s a bit like Marks & Spencer and Tesco — you may have loyal customers but you have to keep bringing out new lines to keep them interested.’

‘Because
she’s been so hurt in the past, her opinion of men is as low as it
could possibly be. She assumes the worst, so when something goes wrong
she flies off the handle and doesn’t stop to listen to advice.

‘Even
in the midst of a massive family crisis, Katie never fully takes her
business head off. She can spot an opportunity for publicity at a
thousand paces — that’s why Kieran calls her a hawk.

Within weeks of her five-year marriage to Peter Andre ending she was engaged to cross-dressing cage-fighter Alex Reid (pictured left with Katie Price)

‘This week she realised that being pregnant again wasn’t a big story any more and the really big opportunity fell into her lap when she found out about Kieran.

She’ll no doubt be hoping to be back to the days of six-figure sums for a single interview.

‘At the end of the day what has she really lost? There are plenty more where he came from.’

Friends say there has been a ‘horrific dynamic’ in Katie and Kieran’s marriage since she fell pregnant with their first child and genuinely feared she might lose the baby.

And what of her fortune? She has always refused to confirm or deny reports of her worth, once saying: ‘You’ll never get it out of me. The less people think I’ve got, the better, because then the exes don’t go for it.’

But will Katie Price’s luck soon run out? Her brand — which includes novels, perfume, a baby range and tabloid-newspaper column — has been diminishing in recent years, and the easy money she used to make in the past is not there any more.

As Mark Borkowski puts it: ‘Anything can happen. If this proves to be a short spike of interest, then it will become more and more difficult for her to engage the public.

‘With no output by which she can be measured, she has no market value in the media.

‘After years of spectacular high points, she could be facing a hell of a drop, but I wouldn’t write her off just yet. She is a very tough woman.